​Bournedale Elementary School is piloting a classroom breakfast initiative in an effort to help students start the day off right.
With the breakfast program, students are given the chance to eat a bagged breakfast in the classroom as soon as they get off the school bus. Breakfast in the classroom is currently available to three classrooms at Bournedale.

If Theo Julmice hadn’t registered for Brockton’s free day camp program, the North Middle School student said he’d probably be sitting at home all summer playing video games.
It is paid through grants, fund-raisers and donations, including $15,000 from Chartwells, which provides food service to Brockton schools, Carpenter said.

So your kids want to get involved in your garden, but they're not ready for weeding or hoeing just yet. Margie Saidel, MPH, RD, LDN, Vice President of Nutrition, Culinary and Sustainability at Chartwells K12, says not to worry — even young children make perfectly adorable landscape designers for those times when your garden so desperately needs an update. Saidel advises, "Give kids graph paper and colorful pencils or markers to draw their ideal garden. Encourage creativity and color — include flowers, pathways, 'fairy houses' and any other accents that will make the garden a favorite destination."

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s summer lunch program, called Meet Up and Eat Up, allows children ages 18 and younger to receive lunch. The Salvation Army of Grand Haven, 310 N. Despelder St., will host the program beginning Monday and running through Friday, Aug. 14.

The end of the school year is days away.
While the end of a school may be reason to celebrate for some students, for others it is reason for concern.
"We know during the regular school year a lot of time the only meal that our students receive are the meals they're served at school," Chartwells Director of Operations Jonathan White said.

Teenagers across the country are taking control of their school lunches, and high schoolers from seven states will travel to the nation’s capital Monday to create healthier cafeterias in the 2015 Cooking Up Change competition.
For the first time, D.C. public school students will participate in the event. The team, with Ay Okuleye and Tatyanna Clark from School Without Walls and Dion Harrison from Eastern Senior High School, will be entering their healthy lo mein recipe. Eight other teams from states as far as Michigan and California will compete to see who has the most delicious, well-rounded meal.

Wayland Union Schools will present a Summer Funtastic Series program that will include free meals for kids.
There is no charge to attend the programs. Lunch will be served immediately afterwards unless otherwise stated. Adults may purchase lunch for $4, and it is served free to children age 18 and under.

Each semester, Middlebrook eighth graders participate in a Culinary Challenge Competition.
Jack Cromwell, Flynn Crowther, Gabby Horicka, and Tyler Previte of this year’s winning Loaded Dishwashers Team had their Mexican rice and fajita stir-fry meals featured on the school’s lunch menu on Wednesday, May 6.

PANAMA CITY — Jessica Hawkins, an eighth grade student at Jinks Middle School, was the recipient of several prizes from Chartwells Food Service for her submission to the inaugural Hometown Throwdown Recipe program. She was presented with a chef’s jacket, a basket full of cooking utensils and $100.
Chartwells staff will assist her in stetting up a Chef2Schools table where she will serve samples of her recipes today from noon to 1:30 p.m. in the cafeteria. Her recipes are entitled Rainbow Pasta and Eva' Smooth Dip.